Wanted: skilled marketing analysts: data sorting is Monday morning headache in NW Arkansas

DSN Retailing Today, Feb 28, 2005

As any supplier to Wal-Mart can testify, one of the unique challenges of working with the company is the massive amount of transaction data accessible through Retail Link, the chain's proprietary data-sharing system.

Wal-Mart s daily sales during the recently ended fiscal year averaged $780 million and the company s data warehouse is capable of storing two years worth of transaction information generated by more than 5,000 worldwide stores of various prototype sizes that operate in markets of highly divergent demographics. As if that weren't enough, Wal-Mart's store-of-the-community initiative further challenges suppliers' data-mining capabilities and the implementation of RFID in coming years will create additional layers of rich information even though existing opportunities are far from being fully exploited.

Suppliers know the data contains valuable information relevant to managing inventories, improving item performance and identifying new sales opportunities--and are frequently reminded by Wal-Mart executives and merchants to make greater use of it. It is a situation that explains why astute marketing analysts proficient in the use of Retail Link are highly prized within suppliers' organizations and the usage of software solutions from third-party providers is on the rise.

"If you get someone who really knows what they are doing they are worth their weight in gold," said Shawn Beezley, coordinator of the marketing analyst certification program at Northwest Arkansas Community College.

The program was developed five years ago with encouragement from Wal-Mart because there was a shortage of those proficient in analyzing Retail Link data, and those who were good at it were highly recruited. Suppliers were hiring people with Retail Link backgrounds away from Wal-Mart and analysts were jumping from supplier to supplier as salaries escalated. Marketing continued to be highly valued which explains why an entry-level position pays an estimated S40,000 annual salary and more experienced analysts are reportedly paid twice that amount.

"We focus oil training for entry-level positions and it is not unusual for a number of students to get jobs as analysts while they are still enrolled in the program," Beezley said. "I feel like we could easily double the size of the program because we fill up the first day enrollment begins."

Doing so would mean hiring more instructors to keep class sizes manageable since the eight-month program already accommodates between 30 and 40 students, many of whom have four-year degrees when they enroll and are changing careers.

As indispensable as marketing analysts arc within suppliers' organizations, suppliers are increasingly reliant on third-party software providers to simplify management of the data.

"It's not that Retail Link is so hard to use," said Lisa Bohn, president and ceo of Bentonville Software Associates. "The bigger issue is every supplier is a little different and their business demands some customization to the data that Wal-Mart makes available. Suppliers are not only using Retail Link data, they are blending it with syndicated data from sources such as Information Resources and Nielsen and a variety of space-planning programs."

According to Bohn, the beauty of a product such as that offered by BSA is it simplifies extracting information from Retail Link and can be programmed to run reports at the user's discretion.

"Monday mornings on Retail Link is a painful process because everyone is trying to access the data and the system is slow," Bohn said. "What our tool allows suppliers to do is get at that data on a Sunday night so the reports are run and waiting for them when they come in on Monday. It helps speed tip the process, automates the mundane requirements and lets them focus on managing the exceptions."

Currently, many suppliers are relying on marketing analysts to perform the process of extracting and compiling information from Retail Link. And, if they don't want to spend the better part of Monday morning preparing those reports, chances are they are working on Sundays.

"There is an awful lot of information available and it takes trained people to go into Retail Link and sort through it and do the production to produce reports and get them in a meaningful fashion for the people who will make decisions on the information," said Larry Fennell with Vendor Managed Technologies. "Analysts are spending half their time producing the reports rather than analyzing the data. There are automated reports that can be run in Retail Link but they are in the form that Wal-Mart puts them in and you can't import your own variables."

Solutions offered by BSA, VMT and other companies such as Decisions Made Easy, Vision Chain and Relational Solutions don't come cheap, typically costing between $25,000 and $1 million, but suppliers generally find that the payback comes in several forms. First, the systems are capable of automating many of the report-generating functions so companies may discover they need fewer marketing analysts to perform those tasks. Or, at a minimum, analysts will be able to spend more time actually doing analysis and unearthing new opportunities.